REVIEW: Better Than Ezra's Kevin Griffin' at Musikfest Cafe is loose and fun, if not breathless

In the course of singing just one song during his solo show Saturday at Musikfest Café at ArtsQuest Center, Better Than Ezra guitarist and singer Kevin Griffin thanked the crowd for singing along, telling them, “It sounds so good you just f—ked me up.”

Then he inserted words referring to the smelting done at the former Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces looming in the window behind him, as well as singing “I’m pretty sure smelting has something to do with steel-making.”

Then he referenced actress Jennifer Beal and her factory work in the movie “Flashdance.” Then started dancing her “Maniac” routine from that movie. And he added snippets of Iggy Azalia’s “Fancy” – replacing the lyrics about “L.A.” to “Bethlehem” – and Sublime’s “What I Got.”

Around all that, Griffin sang a pretty decent version of Better Than Ezra’s “Extra Ordinary,” rap-singing in flat, sardonic tones like New Radicals vocalist Gregg Alexander.

That’s the kind of show it was.

During his hour-and-45-minute set, Griffin sang 24 songs, if you include short versions of an intense-type Celtic number he attributed to Brother Joscephus (more about that later), Little River Band’s “Reminiscing” and Billy Joel’s “Allentown.”

Kevin Griffin at Musikfest Cafe

Kevin Griffin at Musikfest Cafe

Kevin Griffin at Musikfest Cafe

He also did at least three extended impersonations of actor Matthew McConaughey and vowed to sing songs by the musical acts that appeared on the café’s changing lighted advertisement boards (hence the Brother Josephus and Little River Band songs).

Snippets of Joan Osbourne’s “One of Us” and Hootie and The Blowfish’s “I Only Wanna Be With You” (for the ad for of Darius Rucker’s Musikfest show) were too short to count.

Griffin can get away with that because he’s legitimately written hits for other artists, as he showed by playing Howie Day’s 2003 No. 1 hit “Collide” (his voice isn’t as good as Day’s, but he was very credible, making it one of the night’s best) and Sugarland’s 2010 No. 1 hit “Stuck Like Glue.” And Barenaked Ladies most recent single, “Odds Are,” which had the band’s vibe and was pretty good.

But playing with just an acoustic guitar – the fact that it was a Gibson and not one from Nazareth’s Martin guitar plant was a running joke – and a percussionist, Griffin’s seemingly fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants set also included seriously credible covers.

One was Oasis’s “Wonder Wall,” which he said he had never before played for a live audience. Another was a nice, sparse version of Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon.”

But best, and another of the night’s best, was a brief R.E.M. medley of “Talk About the Passion,” “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville” and "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," to which the audience of perhaps 400 spontaneously sang along. (At the start of the show, Griffin set “guidelines,” one of which was “Singing [along] is encouraged.”)

But it’s pretty sure to say people come to a Kevin Griffin concert to hear Better Than Ezra songs, and Griffin played 14 of them. And as you might expect, some also were among the night’s best.

He opened with a stripped version of the band’s 2005 minor hit “A Lifetime” and played slow-and-loose versions of lessor songs “Under You” and “Dollar Sign” on which he showed his good falsetto and flat, sardonic delivery.

Later, he played strong versions of the band’s 2014 single “Crazy Lucky,” with its shuffling pop and falsetto; its current single “Gonna Get Better”; “Get You In”; and a slow and fairly intense “I Just Knew.” The set wound down with a slow-and-gentle “Porcelain” without the drummer and the ‘70s soft rock of “Closer.”

But the best Better Than Ezra songs were its biggest hits.

“Desperately Wanting,” its 1997 hit, was intense, and while it’s hard to say it was better than the band’s version, it was decidedly different. “Good,” its breakthrough 1995 hit, was definitely better than the original version.

And the set-ending “Breathless” was definitely as good as you remember, with Griffin capturing its tumbling confession.

A small complaint was that Griffin skipped some significant songs: “Rosealia,” “All the Stars” and, especially, “King of New Orleans.”

But for the encore, he played requests of “Sunflowers” and a good “In the Blood.”